Faced with the threat the U.S. Senate would block judicial nominees, the Obama administration announced this week it would release the so-called “drone memos” outlining the supposed legal rationale for using drones to attack and kill American citizens.

The “most transparent administration in history” just needed to be asked 22 different ways.

But Paul was hardly the only member of Congress to ask the Obama administration to explain why the U.S. Constitution’s promise of due process and a trial by jury did not apply to al-Awlaki — and what the administration saw as the limits to its extra-judicial fiery-death-from-above powers.

As Wyden noted in that first request, members of Congress cannot begin to understand how the executive branch views its legal authority when that authority is developed in secret legal documents that the Justice Department would not turn over to Congress.

The requests have continued, with regularity, through March of this year, when U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., and seven of her fellow Democrats, wrote a letter directly to Obama seeking the release of the legal memos.

Finally, it seems, the message from Paul and a host of others is being heard.

for the administration’s decision in 2010 to use a drone strike in Yemen to kill Anwar al-Awlaki and his son, American citizens believed to be working for al-Qaeda. Barron, a Harvard Law professor, authored two of the secret memos.

“I can’t imagine appointing someone to the federal bench … without fully understanding that person’s views concerning the extrajudicial killing of American citizens,” Paul wrote in an op-ed that appeared Sunday in the New York Times.

Paul gained national attention for a 14-hour filibuster last year on the topic of — what else — the legality of the Obama administration’s drone strikes.

From Paul to the ACLU, the issue united libertarian-leaning individuals and groups from across the political spectrum.